Imagine if you were to spend the rest of your days imprisoned as a teenager or young adult before your life even started. As troubling as this sounds, this is a reality for many victim offenders in the U.S. criminal justice system — especially women. 

Victim offenders are people who have experienced both victimization and offending. There are many forms of victimization such as child abuse, hate crimes, domestic violence, human trafficking and sexual assault. Systemic victimizations exist resulting from societal issues and within institutions such as educational, governmental, legal, religious and cultural. 

The criminal justice system’s treatment towards individuals who have been both victims and offenders varies depending on the nature of the crime, whether it was violent and the jurisdiction of where it had taken place. Arguably so, there is also bias due to the age, race and gender of the individual. 

Overall, the effort to rehabilitate and support them is inadequate. The American criminal justice system is punitive and tends to view offenders as threats to society. Holistically, the system does not consider offenders who are victims themselves. 

The system can improve through trauma-informed and gender-responsive treatment. Legal representation and law enforcement would consider the victims’ history in sentencing and diversionary programs, along with providing support services to address their offending behavior and victimizations. 

In the U.S., there are 1.9 million people incarcerated in state and federal prisons, local jails, juvenile correctional facilities, immigration detention facilities and more, according to the Policy Prison Initiative. It is unknown how many victim offenders there are because many do not disclose their victimizations. 

Historically, prisons have been designed for men and have neglected the unique and particular needs of incarcerated women. Inadequate access to healthcare, the lack of trauma-informed interventions by correctional staff, facilities and the architectural environment are all designed for men. It is no wonder that these female victim offenders suffer — the criminal justice system does not take them into account. 

Women identify trauma exposure as instrumental in their pathway to crime. In other words, victim offenders may commit crimes as a direct response to their victimization. This is the experience of more female victim offenders than we know because their victimizations are vastly underreported. 

Roughly 191,000 women are incarcerated, according to Women’s Mass Incarceration 2024. Women who are incarcerated are statistically more likely than their male counterparts to report a diagnosis of a mental health condition, be a victim of domestic violence or experience emotional, physical or sexual abuse as a child. 

In 2006, Cyntoia Brown was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison at 16-years-old. Brown maintained that the murder was an act of self-defense, as she was forced into prostitution by her abusive boyfriend who was sex-trafficking her. 

Human trafficking is the recruitment and movement of people through force or deception, with the purpose of exploitation for profit. Victims of sex trafficking are often vulnerable, enduring severe psychological and physical trauma as they are manipulated by traffickers. 

While Brown was incarcerated, she earned her GED, completed a bachelor’s degree and mentored at-risk youth. At 31 years old, Brown was released from prison and granted clemency by former Gov. of Tennessee Bill Haslam. 

Not every victim offender is granted clemency or receives attention. While Brown spent nearly 15 years incarcerated, she now has her life back. A majority of victim offenders, regardless of their gender, do not. For example, the Menendez brothers are serving life imprisonment after they were convicted of first-degree murder for killing their parents. 

Lyle and Erik Menendez — who were 21 and 18 years old — disclosed during their trial that they experienced violence and childhood sexual abuse by their parents. Since the 1980s, the criminal justice system has widely changed the way child abuse victims, particularly those who are male, are perceived. 

Rev. Sharon White-Harrigan, who presides over Columbia University’s Justice Labs, was formerly incarcerated on a manslaughter charge for self-defense against a sexual assault.

As best put by White-Harrigan, “There is justice without punishment. You can hold people accountable without leaving them worse than when they came in.”